CHAPTER TWENTY
DECEMBER 23, 1971
DETROIT, MICHIGAN
8:00 P.M.
Jimmy Hoffa still talks too much.
Teamster leadership is gathered with their families here at Carl’s Chop House for a Christmas celebration. The dance floor is full and drinks flow freely. A polka band clad in ruffled shirts and tuxedos provides the music. A brightly decorated Christmas tree and inflatable Santa Claus centerpiece add to the holiday spirit.
It is a night for merriment, and nothing raises the crowd’s spirits more than the news that James Riddle Hoffa was released from prison at 4:00 p.m. today. President Richard Nixon commuted his sentence to the five years already served. Nixon is running for reelection in the coming year and has been assured he will receive Teamster support for this act of largesse.1
Already, the revelers here at Carl’s—a regular Teamster hangout—are showing their colors. “I’m very happy,” one official tells the reporters who have crashed the party. “I think President Nixon has done us a great service.”
Another Teamster joyfully adds: “With Jimmy out of jail it’s going to be the best Christmas ever.”
But not all are so happy. Current Teamster president Frank Fitzsimmons does not believe Jimmy Hoffa is capable of staying out of Teamster affairs. He has formed his own “Get Hoffa” squad, this one consisting of union members told to be on the lookout for Hoffa meddling in local affairs.
A key proviso of Hoffa’s prison release is that he refrain from participating in Teamster leadership until 1980. Fitzsimmons, fearing Hoffa will once again take control of the union, insisted that Nixon include these terms. However, speaking to reporters outside the Lewisburg federal penitentiary, Hoffa makes it clear that he will not let the president of the United States or the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters dictate what happens next. “I will determine whatever I’m going to do politically after I learn what the restrictions are,” Hoffa boldly states.
When pressed by reporters about “the restrictions Nixon put on you, forbidding you from running for union office,” he pleads ignorance.
“I am unaware of any restrictions,” Hoffa states firmly.
The union boss wears a gray suit, blue tie, and brown shoes. He is visibly thinner and suffers from a mild case of diabetes. It is known that his wife, Josephine, has developed a heart condition. But other than health issues, the future appears bright for Jimmy Hoffa.
As the interviews wind down, Hoffa turns to look at the penitentiary one more time. He thrusts a defiant fist into the air for the inmates to see.
Then he steps into a car to be driven to the airport, where a private plane awaits. As the revelers at Carl’s Chop House know, Jimmy Hoffa is alive, well—and on his way.
FBI director J. Edgar Hoover is late for breakfast.
It is May 2, 1972, five months after the release of Jimmy Hoffa. Annie Fields, the director’s longtime live-in housekeeper, has already poached the eggs, prepared the slice of white toast, and brewed the black coffee Hoover prefers each morning. But she does not hear the sound of a running shower from upstairs or Hoover’s footsteps padding around his bedroom. She last saw her boss yesterday, when he returned from dinner with FBI associate director Clyde Tolson.
James Crawford, until recently one of the bureau’s few African American agents, arrives to do some gardening and oversee household remodeling. Crawford worked as Hoover’s driver from 1934 until 1972, when he was forced to retire from the FBI due to ill health. Hoover immediately hired him as a helper. A concerned Annie Fields asks Crawford to tap on the bedroom door to check on the director.
It has been a troubling time for the FBI and J. Edgar Hoover. Congress recently enacted a law making the FBI leadership subject to Senate approval. Despite the endorsement of current president Richard Nixon, there are cries for the seventy-seven-year-old Hoover to resign. Critics cite his abuse of wiretaps, which Hoover has blamed on the late senator Robert Kennedy, stating that RFK gave his approval for those breaches of the Fourth Amendment. Hoover is also publicly feuding with former attorney general Ramsey Clark, whom the director is quoted as calling a “jellyfish” for his flexible code of morality. Hoover’s unwillingness to investigate civil rights violations and refusal to prosecute unlawful police conduct have also fanned controversy.
In addition, the director is being criticized for placing antiwar activists under criminal investigation, an action that many believe falls beyond the bureau’s purview. Hoover recently made claims that radical elements were attempting to kidnap Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, whom many believe to be an architect of the Vietnam conflict. These charges were proved false, prompting a new round of demands that Hoover retire. And just yesterday, political reporter Jack Anderson published an exposé revealing that the FBI used illegal wiretaps on Dr. Martin Luther King’s telephones in order to investigate his sex life.
Yet J. Edgar Hoover hangs on to his job, recently assuring a House Appropriations subcommittee that he is very much in charge and that the bureau is prospering. However, there is talk that Hoover will be asked to resign if Richard Nixon wins reelection in 1972. Hoover sees that as yet another storm to be weathered.
He is, after all, director for life.
James Crawford knocks on Hoover’s bedroom door. Hearing nothing, he steps inside. A naked J. Edgar Hoover is slumped on the floor atop an oriental rug. Crawford does not touch the body, with the exception of confirming that the director’s hands are ice cold. The cause of death will be listed as “hypertensive cardiovascular disease” by Washington medical examiner Dr. James Luke. No autopsy will be performed.2
The news is flashed to FBI offices around the world. Only then is the American public informed of Hoover’s death by acting attorney general Richard Kleindienst. Congress immediately votes that Hoover’s body be allowed to lie in state within the Capitol Rotunda. This honor has been allowed for just twenty-one persons in American history. President Nixon himself will give Hoover’s eulogy at the National Presbyterian Church two days from now.
From the discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s body to the many public condolences now pouring in, just three hours elapse.
Yet the urgency of those events hardly compares with the lightning-fast dispatch of J. Edgar Hoover’s secret files. Upon discovering the director’s lifeless corpse, Agent Crawford instructs housekeeper Annie Fields to call Assistant Director Clyde Tolson, Hoover’s confidant and second in command. Tolson then phones Helen Gandy, the director’s personal secretary. The seventy-five-year-old, an avid trout fisherman and spinster who has worked fifty-five years for Hoover, immediately begins the destruction of the “Official and Confidential” files.
Among the memos that will mysteriously escape the shredding is a teletype from the Los Angeles field office, stating that Bobby Kennedy borrowed a white Lincoln Continental convertible from Special Agent William Simon in order to visit Marilyn Monroe on the night she died, potentially placing RFK at the scene of her suicide.
To Hoover, these files were not blackmail but a valuable means of keeping his power. Among the data now being destroyed is the long list of congressmen having ties to organized crime. Hoover has never once leaked this information or sought prosecution of these corrupt politicians.
In 1992, twenty years after J. Edgar Hoover’s death, Gambino crime family capo Carmine “the Doctor” Lombardozzi will explain why: “J. Edgar was in our pocket. He was no one we ever needed to fear.”3
Hoover’s death brings to an end one era of law enforcement, even as the 1970s usher in a changing time for organized crime.
As it has been since the Kefauver hearings two decades ago, the secret world of the Mob is a source of endless fascination to Americans. The Godfather, a novel loosely based on New York’s five families, sells more than nine million copies and remains on the New York Times bestseller list for sixty-seven weeks. The subsequent film and sequel of the same name make organized crime even more accessible to the general public. Not surprisingly, the Mafia tried to shut down filming of The Godfather before it even began.
Organized crime boss Joseph Anthony Colombo Sr. at an unknown location in 1971.
The Mob-connected Frank Sinatra sang at a Madison Square Garden fundraiser for the Italian-American Civil Rights League, a group of which crime boss Joe Colombo Sr. is a member. Monies were to be used to battle negative media depictions of Italian Americans, particularly The Godfather. But eventually, after producer Al Ruddy secretly paid Colombo for the privilege of filming in New York, production was allowed to commence.
But Colombo’s very public entanglement with The Godfather was heavily frowned upon by other New York crime families. In a vivid instance of art imitating life, on the same day director Francis Ford Coppola films a scene depicting the murder of a Mafia boss in New York, actual crime boss Joe Colombo Sr. is shot in the head just four blocks away. The hit occurs during the Italian-American League’s public rally in Columbus Circle.4
After the film’s release, the Mafia is so taken with The Godfather that some mobsters adopt many of the rituals seen on film. The cheek-to-cheek kisses of made men, the act of kissing the Godfather’s ring, and even use of the term Godfather—all long ago abandoned by crime families—once again become part of the Mafia ritual.
The movie wins three Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Dangerous and violent men revel in its success. But reality will soon intrude.
In January 1975, the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities begins investigating the inner workings of the FBI and CIA. Led by Senator Frank Church of Idaho, this Church Committee is soon stunned to discover that they are uncovering some of the most tightly held secrets in America.
In addition to learning that the FBI and CIA are opening the mail of average citizens, eavesdropping on their telephone conversations, and even breaking into their homes to gather evidence, the Church Committee confirms that the CIA actually hired Mafia killers to assassinate Fidel Castro.
The committee hastily works to put a real-life Mafioso on the stand. That man is Sam Giancana. The American public’s fascination with the Mob leads Senate majority leader Mike Mansfield to warn against turning the hearings into a “television extravaganza” rather than a serious investigation. But it’s too late. Giancana’s pending appearance ensures enormous publicity for the proceedings.
At Giancana’s last appearance before a Senate committee, he famously sparred with Bobby Kennedy but chose to take the Fifth to maintain his code of omertà. But that was long ago. This time, the mobster promises to speak on the record.
It has been a decade since Giancana was a force in organized crime. His flashy lifestyle and unwillingness to share the profits of his worldwide casino operations caused a rift between himself and other top crime bosses. In 1966, he endured a short prison sentence for refusing to testify before a grand jury. Immediately upon his release, knowing that another jury subpoena—and prison sentence—would be forthcoming, he fled to Cuernavaca, Mexico. This would be his home for the next eight years, a time when he traveled to Asia, Europe, and the Mideast for business and pleasure.
But on July 19, 1974, Mexican officials forcibly enter Giancana’s home as he sleeps, dragging him from his bed and sending the mobster back to the United States. He soon returns to his home in Oak Park, Illinois, and attempts to ingratiate himself with the Outfit.
“Sam thought nothing had changed, but everything had changed,” a Mob informant will tell the New York Times.
Sam Giancana is expelled from the Mob for good because he still refuses to share casino profits. And so he agrees to testify before the Church Committee. That seals his fate.
On the night of June 19, 1975, two police bodyguards mysteriously abandon their post outside Giancana’s house. The mobster is not informed. He is entertaining his youngest daughter, Francine, and her husband, Jerome DePalma. There are others in the house as well, but soon they depart.
As the evening grows late, Sam Giancana goes up to his bedroom but finds that he cannot sleep. He then walks down the steps to his basement kitchen and prepares a dinner of sausage, peppers, escarole, and chickpeas.
It is a meal Sam Giancana never gets the chance to eat.
The gunshot to the back of his head comes without warning, killing the mobster instantly.
But the murderer is not finished.
Sometimes, in the world of the Mafia, it is not enough to shoot a man dead; a message must be sent.
So the killer rolls Giancana onto his back. The .22-caliber pistol equipped with a silencer is placed between his lips and shoved deep into his throat. A bullet into the mouth is the Mafia manner of death for those choosing to testify against them.
The gunman fires six times.
Robert Maheu, the CIA operative who once colluded with Giancana over the Castro assassination, gets the message. “The Mob knew Sam wouldn’t keep his mouth shut,” Maheu will comment, “so it silenced him for good.”
Johnny Roselli also talks too much.
On June 24, 1975—just five days after the shocking murder of Sam Giancana—the sixty-nine-year-old mobster testifies before the Church Committee. Roselli is rattled by the murder of Giancana and is plotting revenge against a member of the Chicago Outfit, Butch Blasi, whom Roselli suspects of assassinating his old friend. “I’d like to cut his fucking balls off and shove them up his ass,” Roselli fumes to Jimmy Fratianno, a longtime Mob acquaintance.
Nevertheless, Johnny Roselli is talking. He has spent time in a federal penitentiary and finding himself completely unsuited for a life behind bars, Roselli will do whatever it takes to make sure he never returns. “If they’re going to kill me, they’re going to kill me,” the mobster says with a fatalistic smirk, referring to the Mob.
The testimony in Washington will be the first of three appearances before the Church Committee, covering topics ranging from the Fidel Castro assassination attempt to whether or not the Mob played a role in the murder of John F. Kennedy. Roselli will reveal the shocking love triangle among Sam Giancana, JFK, and Judith Campbell. The Mafia is not happy about that. “When you’re called before a committee like that you have to go to your people and ask them what to do,” a confidential Mob source will tell the New York Times. “Roselli not only did not come to us, he went to the committee and shot his mouth off all over the place.” 5
So, even before he gives testimony, Roselli’s murder is approved by the twenty-six top crime families in America.
In truth, Johnny Roselli has fallen on hard times. He was sentenced to prison for a card-cheating operation.6 Since his release he has been reduced to owning a gift shop at the Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas. But it is too dangerous for Roselli to live in that town, so he resides with his sister and brother-in-law, Edith and Joseph Daigle, in Plantation, Florida. Roselli spends most days reading by the pool, walking his poodle, and then watching television in the evenings. He never plays the same golf course twice, for fear of getting murdered. On those occasions that he does make dinner reservations, Roselli always books under his sister’s name.
The mobster believes this caution protects him from being killed. But he is wrong. The hit team from Chicago is patient and methodical, carefully monitoring Roselli’s scant activities.
Upon completion of his testimony, Roselli tries to make amends with the underworld. He meets with Santo Trafficante of the Tampa crime family, whom Roselli testified was heavily involved in the plot to murder Fidel Castro. As a result of that testimony, Trafficante himself is subpoenaed to appear before the Church Committee. Trafficante is among the most private crime bosses, and Roselli’s actions have placed him in jeopardy.
But all appears forgiven. Roselli and Trafficante have dinner at the Landing’s Restaurant in Fort Lauderdale in mid-June. Despite the obvious fact that dining with a crime family boss that he has betrayed could be dangerous, Roselli does not feel uncomfortable. Josie, Trafficante’s wife, and Roselli’s sister, Edith, are also present. Edith will later report that it was a polite evening and “no business was discussed.”
But on July 28, 1976, Johnny Roselli finds out what happens to those who defy the Mob. After a late breakfast with his sister, Roselli borrows her year-old silver Impala. The mobster tells Edith he is going to play golf and puts his clubs in the trunk. But instead, Roselli drives to a North Miami marina. He parks the Impala and walks to the dock, where he greets an old friend. He is also introduced to a visitor from Chicago, whereupon the three men board a waiting boat for a quiet afternoon at sea.
For the debt-ridden Roselli, who longs for a return to the action, this is perhaps a chance to reinsert himself into the upper levels of organized crime. If he suspects anything is amiss, he does not show it. The dinner with Santo Trafficante has assured Roselli that he has made amends and his Senate testimony is forgiven. After months of caution and looking over his shoulder, Roselli steps aboard the boat and accepts the offer of a cocktail. He asks for vodka, then settles into a deck chair to enjoy the cruise.7
As soon as the boat pushes off and motors toward the Intracoastal Waterway, a man hiding onshore steals the silver Impala and drives it to the Miami airport, where it is parked in a busy garage and abandoned.
Meanwhile, Johnny Roselli is enjoying his drink and the warm sea breeze. He does not pay attention as the visitor from Chicago maneuvers around behind him. Without warning, a powerful hand is clamped over Roselli’s mouth and nose. He drops the vodka and struggles to free himself, but his emphysema does not allow effective resistance. He also has arthritis of the spine, making it difficult to fight back. Johnny Roselli is dead in less than a minute.
It is not enough to dump his body overboard. The mobster might bob back to the surface before the sharks can eat him. Instead, the killers tape a wash cloth over Roselli’s mouth to ensure he cannot breathe if he somehow comes back to life. Then his legs are sawed off. A rope is tied around Roselli’s neck and large tow hooks are inserted into his abdomen just below the ribs. The two murderers then lift the body with the rope and hooks, placing it inside a metal oil drum measuring three feet high and twenty-two inches across. Holes have been drilled into the metal so it will sink. After the torso is inside, both severed legs are shoved on top. Heavy iron chains are wrapped around the mangled corpse. Only then is the body thrown overboard.
Johnny Roselli had a running joke with his brother-in-law, Joe Daigle, that if he ever goes missing, the best place to look for his body would be an airport parking lot. So it is that when Roselli is not home by dark, Daigle drives to the Fort Lauderdale airport in search of the silver Impala. Not finding it, he then searches the Miami airport. On the third floor of a parking garage Daigle locates his wife’s Chevy, with the golf clubs inside.
But no sign of Roselli.
However, the world has not seen the last of him.
Ten days after the mobster’s murder, three fishermen spot the oil drum washed up on a sandbar in Dumfoundling Bay near North Miami Beach.
Roselli’s brutalized and waterlogged remains are found inside. The mobster will be cremated. And while there will be no grave site for family to visit, the mystery of her brother’s disappearance is solved for his sister, Edith.
But the family of another high-profile man will not be so fortunate.
Jimmy Hoffa is nervous and angry.
“I’m being stood up,” he shouts into a pay phone.
It is July 30, 1975, just a month after the murder of Sam Giancana, and Johnny Roselli’s first appearance before the Church Committee. Hoffa has been out of jail for three and a half years now. Per the terms of his release, he is not allowed to hold union office until 1980, but his lawyers are working hard to get that time reduced. To keep himself busy, Hoffa has been touring the country, visiting local unions and gathering support for what he hopes to be a successful 1976 run for the Teamster presidency.
But Jimmy Hoffa is well aware that the Mafia has gained greater authority over the union since he was forced to step down. They control his handpicked successor, Frank Fitzsimmons, who was never meant to be more than a caretaker until Hoffa’s release. However, Fitzsimmons has proven pliant in his relations with the Mob, more than willing to make Teamster pension funds available for loans and other deals to enrich the Mafia. As a result, he is a most formidable opponent.
Tony Provenzano is the leader of the powerful New Jersey Local 560. But Tony Pro, as he is known, also holds the rank of capo in the Genovese crime family. His enemies have a way of disappearing, among them Armand “Cookie” Faugno and Anthony Castellitto, whose bodies are thought to be entombed in a sixty-acre New Jersey landfill known as Brother Moscato’s Dump.8
Making the situation even more unpredictable, Hoffa and Provenzano knew each other while serving time in Lewisburg penitentiary, where they were not on friendly terms. “It’s because of people like you that I got into trouble in the first place,” Hoffa said to Tony Pro, alluding to Bobby Kennedy’s successful public unveiling of the relationship between the Teamsters and the Mafia.
But today is a chance for a new beginning, though it is off to a bad start. Hoffa was due to have lunch with Provenzano and Detroit Mafioso Anthony Giacalone at 2:00 p.m. this afternoon. Both men are late.
The meal is supposed to take place at the Machus Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield Hills, seven miles northwest of Detroit. Hoffa knows it well. Like Carl’s Chop House, the Red Fox is a frequent Teamster hangout. Hoffa’s son, James, held his wedding reception here. Normally, Hoffa would never bring Mafia members to this highbrow establishment, but due to the sensitive nature of today’s meeting, the union leader makes an exception. This is to be a “peace meeting” between Hoffa and Tony Pro, an attempt to achieve reconciliation between the two men and discuss the future relationship between the Mob and Teamsters if, and when, Jimmy Hoffa takes back his old job.
Nevertheless, Jimmy Hoffa is uncomfortable. He suspects something isn’t quite right. So Hoffa is not himself today. His wife, Josephine, will later recall how tense Hoffa looked as he left the house, as if he had a premonition of bad things happening.
In fact, Hoffa is so ill at ease that en route to the lunch he makes an impulsive visit to the limousine company owned by good friend Louie Linteau hoping he might come along as an ally. But Linteau is out and Hoffa must proceed alone. Dressed in blue pants, blue shirt, white socks, black Gucci loafers, and sunglasses, Hoffa arrives and then waits in the parking lot across from the restaurant.
It is 2:15 when Hoffa phones Josephine, who tells him no one has called to explain the delay. He tells her he will be home by 4:00 p.m. to barbecue steaks. Hoffa hangs up, then resumes pacing. Despite the fact that he has not yet been restored to Teamster leadership, Jimmy Hoffa is popular and famous among Detroit union members. So even as he frets in the parking lot, Hoffa is approached by two local men eager to say hello and shake his hand.
They leave. By 2:30, Jimmy Hoffa is still waiting for Tony Pro and Anthony Giacalone.
Sometime between 2:45 and 3:00 p.m., Hoffa’s wait comes to an end.
A maroon sedan pulls up. Three men sit inside. Jimmy Hoffa steps into the vehicle, taking a seat up front on the passenger side. At the age of sixty-two, with a lifetime on the fringe of the murky world of organized crime, Hoffa is well aware that he has chosen a perilous place to sit. It was Al Capone rival Hymie Weiss, during the days of Prohibition, who invented the manner of execution known as “taking a ride.” The victim sits in the front seat, unable to see the actions of the man sitting directly behind him, who then shoots him in the head. Another version is for the individual in the back to loop a rope or piano wire around the neck of the person sitting in front, then strangle the victim.
That scenario was used in the movie The Godfather.
Jimmy Hoffa must have completely trusted the driver of the sedan, thought to be either a Lincoln or Mercury as described by an eyewitnesses who saw Hoffa get in. And he must have felt at ease with the men in the back seat. Nervous, alone, and battle-hardened, Hoffa would never put himself in the hands of adversaries.
As Jimmy Hoffa settles into the front seat, events unfold that still remain a mystery. Only one thing is certain: Hoffa vanishes.9
And so it is that in 1975 and 1976, major crime figures Giancana, Roselli, and Hoffa are off the board. They will be replaced by young blood, organized crime members who are even more ruthless than their predecessors. But one of these men is not who he appears to be.
His name is Donnie Brasco.